Book List of the Week: Carlo Ratti
By Steve Kroeter October 20, 2014
As founder and director of MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory, Carlo Ratti investigates how digital technologies are changing urban living. Trained as an architect (he runs an architecture firm in Turin, Italy) and engineer, he also has several patents to his name. His Digital Water Pavilion, exhibited at the 2008 World Expo in Barcelona, was hailed by Time magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year.
Ratti is author of six books on big data and city planning, including Decoding the City, published this September by Birkhäuser.
His selections for Designers & Books “fundamentally challenge the status quo of architecture, urbanism, and design,” Ratti writes in the introduction to his book list. “They present new ingredients and recipes for future transformations in urban life and society.”
Among these are Lewis Mumford’s The City in History, from 1961 (“An expansive journey from the beginning of human habitation to the present,” Ratti comments), and Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, from 1967 (“some of the sharpest design-based ideas for the contemporary global condition”). There is also Marguerite Yourcenar’s fictional Memoirs of Hadrian, from 1951, which describes the 2nd-century city of Antinopolis created by the Roman emperor Hadrian—“a city created,” Ratti comments, “not for efficiency, politics, or commerce, but for love.”
A recent title on Ratti’s book list is Anthony Hacker’s 2013 book, Smart Cities, about “how our cities are becoming computers ‘en plein air.’” Another is Rem Koolhaas’s Fundamentals, the official catalogue for the much debated 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.
We’ll be giving away copies of Fundamentals (published by Marsilio, distributed by Rizzoli) as part of of a special “Design Books to Win” drawing in partnership with Knoll on October 29. To receive information about this giveaway and updates about “Design Books to Win, ”subscribe by e-mail, follow Designers & Books on Twitter and Facebook, or use the hashtag #bookstowin
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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